Matt sent me this:
"I am writing to take issue with your reposting of Mohamed Nazzal's "A 'Racist' Lebanese Travels to Sri Lanka". I was disappointed by the piece when I read it in Al-Akbar but somewhat disturbed that you reposted part of it without comment or caveat. I am not sure if you read the article so I will give you my quick reaction to it. The most troubling aspect of the article is that is praises and promotes
"I am writing to take issue with your reposting of Mohamed Nazzal's "A 'Racist' Lebanese Travels to Sri Lanka". I was disappointed by the piece when I read it in Al-Akbar but somewhat disturbed that you reposted part of it without comment or caveat. I am not sure if you read the article so I will give you my quick reaction to it. The most troubling aspect of the article is that is praises and promotes
tourism to a country that very recently used a natural disaster to
crush resistance, and in the process to conduct a viscous campaign of
ethnic cleansing in which hundred of thousands of people were held in concentration camps for months and thousands of people were massacred.
See:
On these atrocities the author only says that their 'ethnic civil war'
"ended four years ago and Sri Lanka is moving forward." Never forget. Nor
should Sri Lanka be implicitly promoted as a solution to Lebanon's political
conflict. In context this is tantamount to desiring that the phalange had
accomplished its fascist goals. Second, the article -- though obviously well-intentioned and in general
keeping with your consistent critique of Lebanese racism and chauvinism -- problematically played on that chauvinism in order to argue that Sri
Lankans deserve to be seen as 'civilized'. He employs notions that legitimacy
requires a claim to ancient 'civilization': Sri Lankan "civilization...goes back
further in time" than the Lebanese. He contrasts Lebanese supposed technological backwardness with Sri Lankan modernity and public highways "which
are more similar to those in Europe," on which the "white lines are as bright
as snow." It implicitly argues that "most city dwellers speak English" (with
the caveat of British colonialism) is a sign of superiority; that
compulsory education is a sign of superiority; that fear of police is superior. He
uses the familiar Israeli trope that kindness to animals makes Sri Lankans
superior. Implicit in all these arguments is the message that Lebanese are not
"superior" by western techno-cultural-nationalist standards but inferior. He even
explicitly
does this by juxtaposing the Lebanese, with their "erratic car horns" to
the 'quiet' and 'peaceful' Sri Lankans. All of this comparison using the
white man's measuring stick has the effect of propping up and valorizing not just
arepressive state but one which is built on war crimes while at the same
time
degrading not just the Lebanese racists but the whole of the Lebanese
people for their supposed 'backwardness' in relation to Europe...
P.S. It even said Lebanese should love Sri Lankans because they make
your
favorite potatoes! (tea)"
